Chapter Text
In the deepest, most hidden parts of the subconscious of a city that knows nothing about it, reality--or what passes for reality, this far down--warps. A heavy iron door appears, flickers once or twice, and then settles. There's a certain weight to the door that seems to darken the air around it, as if it's somehow contriving to pull the darkness in toward it.
In the gathering folds of darkness, two observers track these changes with obvious displeasure. A man in a white mask that covers most of his face crosses his arms and angles his posture away from the door. Next to him, something undefined waves too many tentacles in the door's direction.
"This is ridiculous," says the tentacles. "It's absurd--are you just letting any disgusting thing into that room now? Bad enough that you let humans just wander in, as if that's not an interference, as if--"
"Calm yourself, Nyarlathotep," the man in the mask says. His mouth twists easily around the syllables of the name, long practice and familiarity making it sound almost graceful. "We've agreed that the Wild Cards deserve access to the Velvet Room."
"Deserve is a stretch, Philemon," Nyarlathotep says.
"But we have agreed, nevertheless," Philemon says calmly. "And in any case, I don't believe that will be much of an issue in this instance." The world around them does not blur, or move, or shift in any perceptible way. But suddenly, as if they had always been there, the two of them are standing in a crowd, on the edge of a busy street. Everything is frozen in place, as if time itself had stopped, apart from one terrified looking teenage boy in the middle of it all, staring up at bright blue flames--
"Humanity's champion will not have the Velvet Room to guide him," Philemon continues, a frown clear in his voice, if not on his face. "With the room itself in chains, even if he finds his way inside, he will not find aid there."
"No," Nyarlathotep says. "He will find that upstart god of control." He snorts, a dismissive sound that something with so little face and so much tentacle should not be able to produce. Nevertheless, he manages impressively well.
"This upcoming conflict leaves a bad taste in my mouth," Philemon admits. "It feels unbalanced. I dislike this invasion of the Velvet Room, and you clearly dislike its invader."
Nyarlathotep's tentacles lash unhappily. "That thing is anathema to me," he says. "Listen. If we agree that this struggle is unbalanced, then why not bend the rules around noninterference, just this once? We could wipe that impudent godling off the surface of the planet, and--"
"No," Philemon says, still calm in the face of Nyarlathotep's unraveling anger. The clear impression is that he's seen this too many times to be perturbed by it. "Because I know you. And if we agree to free reign to remove Yaldabaoth as a threat as god of control, you will take advantage of that to slip in some collateral damage."
"I would not," Nyarlathotep says. He sounds offended. His companion is unimpressed.
"I've known you too long to not see when you're lying," Philemon says, absently. As the world and the people around them starts to move, his eyes stay fixed on the very confused boy now standing on the far side of the intersection from where he and Nyarlathotep are observing from. Unlike the two of them, who despite their strangeness seem to remain completely unseen by the pedestrians around them, several people are giving the boy dirty looks as he stands there in frozen confusion.
Abruptly, Philemon's gaze shifts away from the boy, and fixes on Nyarlathotep. "Counterproposal," he says. "We don't interfere, but we agree to guide him."
"Together?" Nyarlathotep asks. If he was human enough to have lips, his would probably be curling. "I have no interest in cooperating with you, or in guiding humanity's champion."
"I think you'll like this one," Philemon says. "There's a bit of chaos in the Trickster."
A pause follows this statement.
"...a Trickster, is it?" Nyarlathotep asks. "It's unusual for one of those to be on your side."
"If there was ever going to be a time for us to agree to a truce," Philemon says. "This would be it."
For long seconds, the question hangs in the air between them.
There is a clear sense that Nyarlathotep is about to say no. In many universes, he does. In these other worlds, things continue along without the intervention of either power.
But in this world, the force of chaos wavers, and shrugs with several dark tentacles. "I suppose," he says. "Why not? It will be a distraction from the bad taste that thing's control leaves in my mouth."
The scene around them shifts again. Several times. As the world around them simply becomes one place and then another--a school, a subway station, a public park, and then finally a dimly lit cafe--it gives the distinct impression that for these two, reality doesn't mean much. It's simply an affectation to be adopted when it's convenient, whose rules are to be stretched and broken the moment they are no longer needed.
Now they're alone in this cafe. Philemon takes a seat at the counter, while Nyarlathotep looks around, nods in what seems like satisfaction, and squirms his tentacled form behind it.
"This is where the Trickster is coming to stay," Philemon says. He eyes Nyarlathotep as he makes himself comfortable on the other side of the counter, and adds, "You might want to find another form if you plan to embed yourself here."
"I know that," Nyarlathotep says, irritated. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his form starts to shift. The myriad tentacles combine, gaps between them stitching themselves together, into the rough shape of a human--two tentacles at about shoulder level, two to support him like wobbly, rubbery legs. "I have done this before, you know," he reminds Philemon.
"It didn't work particularly well for you back then," Philemon says, eyeing the transformation with only mild interest. "Did you really bring us here because you plan to play at parenthood again?"
"It worked well enough, last time," Nyarlathotep says, a little petulantly. His form continues to smooth over, the color changing from a black pit of endless darkness to a completely normal skin tone. Fingers and toes sprout from the ends of what had been tentacles and now look more like limbs. There's hair on his head, and a suggestion of features below it.
"Debatable," Philemon says.
"An entire world was destroyed because of how I raised that boy," Nyarlathotep insists. "It's not my fault you interfered and reset everything." He shakes his head, and the half formed features there resolve into a defined face, hair falling now into a neat, straight style just below his newly formed chin.
"The Trickster doesn't have parents for you to replace," Philemon says. He cocks his masked face slightly to one side, considering, then adds, "Not here, anyway. And I doubt that he would be inclined to listen to them if they were."
"But he will have a guardian here," Nyarlathotep says. "And you know how these things go as well as I do." His voice croaks and changes as he speaks, crackling as human vocal chords form midsentence. It rises up from the sepulchral lows of his natural tone to something that seems to be a better fit his borrowed face. It's a woman's voice, matter of fact, but with just a hint of warmth behind it. "That will have to be good enough."
"I hope you're not planning to replace the guardian," Philemon says, warningly. "The last time you tried this, you replaced someone that was already dead. That's very different from writing off someone that's still alive." He pauses, then adds, "Besides. I'm fairly sure that's not what he looks like."
"That would be far too complicated to arrange quickly," Nyarlathotep says. His words don't quite match the movements of his new face--the mouth keeps moving a beat or two later than it should, and there's no life behind the eyes. "But his guardian has a daughter with a dead mother, does he not?"
"He does," Philemon says.
"Then that woman will do," Nyarlathotep says. "She fits well enough in this place. The minds of those who knew her won't fight too strongly against her presence, and the Trickster won't question whether he's supposed to have one guardian for the year or two."
"I suppose not," Philemon says. "Although you might want to put some more effort into making that face look natural. Someone's coming."
And in the next moment the door opens, letting in a middle aged man wearing an apron and carrying a box of cafe supplies. His eyes sweep over the cafe, barely noticing Philemon but landing with a start of surprise on Nyarlathotep's newly adopted form. "Wakaba," he says, bald shock in his voice. "You're..."
There's a pause.
Reality, which had proven so malleable earlier, bends again around them.
"...back already," the man finishes, relaxing out of his shock and surprise over seeing the face of a woman that should have been dead. "I wasn't expecting to see you here so early."
"Oh, well," Nyarlathotep says, and there's no sign now of the off-putting delay between words and mouth that Philemon had pointed out. There's a semblance of life behind the features too, that makes the body seem passably human. Either this is reality changing to accommodate his plans, or he is a remarkably good actor. He smiles, and there's no sign at all of tentacles in the accompanying shrug. "Your new ward is supposed to arrive soon, isn't he?"
"I think so," the man says, not particularly concerned as he starts to put things away. "Yeah. What does he have to do with anything though?"
"Well let's just say," Nyarlathotep says. "That I'm very interested in meeting him."
-//-
Akira doesn't take much in when he first arrives at Leblanc. His replies to his new guardians' questions are automatic, helped along by the fact that he's given the same answers to the same questions at least a hundred times since he was first arrested.
(Well, they're not exactly the same answers)
(He's stopped trying to explain that he hadn't done anything wrong, to people that don't care enough to listen)
But he'd mouthed along to the explanations he's already given his disappointed parents and the uninterested judge who handed down his sentence. And he'd met the people he'll be staying with, if 'staying with' is still the right phrase when he's in the attic over a cafe, and they live at the house down the street. Either way, he'd gotten through it, and through the rest of the afternoon and evening after, had fallen asleep on the narrow mattress stacked up on old crates, and now here he is. Jerking awake from nightmares of a prison cell and an old man with a long nose that had sent shivers up his spine that are so intense, he's struggling to fight them off even now that he's awake.
The idea of closing his eyes and going back to sleep feels impossible right now. Akira stumbles out of bed and down the stairs, thinking that at least there's going to be room to pace around down there, and work off some of the nervous energy that he'd woken up with. It'll be empty, there aren't going to be customers at one in the morning, and his two guardians will have gone home, where they don't have to do any guardian-ing, so--
He rushes down the stairs, anxiety and a kind of nervous, pointless energy making it hard to hold still or go slow. His footsteps rattle the old wood of the stairs, and he only pulls up short when he gets to the bottom and sees that he'd been wrong. He's not alone, and the woman he'd met when he first came in this afternoon (what's her name? Wakaba?) is puttering around the jars of coffee beans behind the counter.
"Was that you up there?" she asks, as Akira stops dead. "Making all that noise?"
"I--" He hesitates, but it's one in the morning, he's been in Tokyo for all of half a day, and now on top of the weird hallucination he'd had on the way in, he's having nightmares that he doesn't even understand. That's probably what makes him do the dumb thing, and goes for sarcasm instead of just nodding and going back upstairs. He says, "I hope it was me, unless you guys stuck any other teen delinquents up there."
She turns away from the beans to give him a look he can't see in the dark, and he wonders suddenly why she's doing all this down here in the dark. She could have turned the lights on, it probably wouldn't even have woken him up. Honestly, he sort of wonders why she's down here at all, this late at night--there has to be some better time to work on coffee sorting, or whatever.
"Oh no," Wakaba says, a little bit of a smile in her voice. A little bit of a bite, too. "No one else up there but you."
"Yeah," Akira mutters. "I know, I--"
"And whoever you're dreaming about, of course."
He stops. "How did you know I was dreaming?" he asks.
"You talk in your sleep," Wakaba says.
Akira blinks. He never has before. "I do?"
"Of course you do," Wakaba says. "How else would I know you were having nightmares about..." she pauses. "What was it, rehabilitation?"
Akira flinches away from the memory of that cell, where the old man had leered at him and intoned his horrible warnings about a rehabilitation he hadn't explained. Apparently he had been talking in his sleep, because there's really no other way she could possibly have known what was going on inside his head. "Sorry if I was being loud," he says, instead of answering her.
"Oh no," Wakaba says dismissively. "There's nothing wrong with screaming through nightmares. That's what they're there for."
Akira flushes at screaming, embarrassed. "Sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to."
"Well," Wakaba says. "If you don't want to let the nightmares bother you, then don't."
"Easy to say," Akira mutters. "I haven't had nightmares like that before. I didn't know I was going to start... talking in my sleep, or screaming or whatever."
"Listen," Wakaba says, fully turning around from the coffee, and resting her arms on the counter. In the dark, her hunched over posture looks somehow inhuman, blurring at the edges so that it's hard to focus. Her voice, suddenly, has gone very serious. "You can't let the nightmares bother you. It's what they want."
"How can a nightmare want anything?" Akira asks.
"Dreams can do a lot of damage," Wakaba says. "So don't let them in. Don't believe them. Look your nightmares in the eye and tell them that they're full of shit."
Akira snorts.
"You think I'm joking?" Wakaba asks. "I'm not. I'm completely serious, because I know that dreams can hurt." Her tone is almost challenging. "Or are you trying to tell me that there was nothing odd about that dream?"
Akira can't tell her that. It would be a lie.
"Then the next time you have that dream," Wakaba says. "You tell... whoever it was you were talking to, that they should go fuck themselves. Tell them from me, alright?" She grins. "Or I'll go there myself and make them regret it."
"Sure," Akira says, and cracks a grin despite himself. If he'd started talking in his sleep back home, his mom probably would have just told him to stop waking up the rest of the house. This is better, he's pretty sure. It makes him feel at least a little bit less alone. "I... think I'm going back to bed."
"Remember what I said," Wakaba tells him. "If you have those nightmares again."
"Yeah," Akira says, bemused. "I'll tell him the creepy weirdo with the long nose that Wakaba Isshiki said she's going to kick some ass. I mean--if the nightmare comes back."
"It will," Wakaba says. "He won't leave you alone that easily."
Akira opens his mouth. Hesitates. He... hadn't said anything about who was in his dream. Had he? Or...?
Maybe she's just assuming he. It's most peoples' default assumption, whether that's right or not.
(And what does she even mean, 'won't leave you alone that easily'? That's so creepy)
"Right," he says uncertainly, and starts to turn around. But then he hears her going back to the coffee beans, and curiosity gets the better of him. He turns back, and asks, "What are you doing here, by the way? Don't you live with Sojiro?"
"Yes," Wakaba says. "But you could say it's a new arrangement. I'm giving him space to adjust to.. the reality of having me around again."
"Oh," Akira says. That sounds complicated, and like it's probably not any of his business. He's not completely sure what Sojiro and Wakaba's relationship is, but it seems complicated. And if Akira's parents have taught him anything, it's that adult relationships are messy and complicated. His parents constant fighting and making up and fighting again had taught him that it's just not a good idea to interfere. "Yeah, sure. Okay."
"And since I'm giving him space," Wakaba says. "I thought I might as well get things organized the way I like them."
"How's that?" Akira asks.
"However I want," Wakaba says, with satisfaction. "A little bit of chaos is good for a place."
And she gets back to what she'd been doing, which is apparently making a mess of the carefully organized cafe. Akira goes back upstairs, and after a little bit of tossing and turning, he gets back to sleep.
The next morning, as Akira is easing his way back down into the cafe, trying to feel out exactly how welcome he actually is here, he finds Sojiro grumbling as he sorts his way through what he calls an absolute disaster of his coffee beans, and Wakaba winks at Akira as she smiles contentedly into her coffee.
And then the night after that, when he dreams of the prison cell, he remembers what he'd been told, and the wink from Wakaba to him like they were sharing a secret, and tells Igor with the long nose that his guardian says he can go fuck himself--and it actually startles Igor, for a moment, into silence.
"Excuse me," he says, in a warning tone that Akira should probably have heeded. "Would you like to repeat yourself?"
And Akira, who doesn't have any idea what's going on, who has never dreamed like this in his life, but who had seen the effect that his words have just had, tries it again. Whether he knows it himself yet or not--he is a Trickster. He doesn't back down, he pushes, and he takes it on himself to say even more.
"My mom says you can go fuck yourself," he says, ignoring the fact that Wakaba is less of a mom than she is a temporary guardian, and less of a guardian than she is a probation officer. The look on Igor's face when he says it is funny, is what feels important. It's funny and it feels like it's working, so Akira grins in the thing's face and says, "My mom says she'll come in here and kick your ass."
There is silence.
The old man seems, for a moment, almost a little bit afraid.
Akira, testing his luck, says, "I kind of hope she does."
(And then the room, in the stunned, silent moment of its master's indecision, shakes. Something that is anathema to it, something that has never been invited in before, not until this moment, creeps the barest fraction of an inch inside. There is a weight, a pressure, a suggestion of tentacles, and then, unexpectedly, of coffee)
Akira feels it. He doesn't know what it means but he feels it, and he remembers the woman that had so immediately offered him support, and he stands a little bit straighter. And he's a little less afraid of his nightmares.
-//-
Things settle, over the next few days. The boy that Nyarlathotep and Philemon call Trickster, whose classmates call him a delinquent, but who normally goes by Akira, gains another new name. His new friends call him Joker, and no one is happier about this than Nyarlathotep, as much as he tries to hide it.
"Your idea?" Philemon asks him, from what's becoming his usual place at Leblanc's counter.
"No," Nyarlathotep says. "He just has good taste, apparently."
"I always knew you had a soft spot for that boy back then," Philemon says.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Nyarlathotep informs him.
"Of course not," Philemon says. "I'm sure the good mood is completely unrelated."
"He told the idiot godling to fuck himself, too," Nyarlathotep says, ignoring this. "I was watching."
"Were you?" Philemon asks. He sounds amused. "And how did you manage that, from within that room?"
"I was invited," Nyarlathotep says, smugly. "By the Trickster."
"Were you?" Philemon asks, and his amusement shifts suddenly into alarm.
"Just the slightest fraction," says Nyarlathotep. As Philemon grows more concerned, he seems to edge toward outright enjoyment. "But we have a truce, don't we? We've agreed to work together."
"I didn't realize the truce extended that far," Philemon says, and Nyarlathotep makes the kind of laugh that only something with too much mouth can manage. It's horrible, coming from his current face.
"Relax," he says. "I don't like being there and it doesn't like me being there either. I'm just keeping an eye on the upstart." He pauses, turns away, and busies himself for a moment with ruining a pot of coffee before admitting, "And on the Trickster."
"Ah," Philemon says, watching him closely. "So that's where this is coming from." He still doesn't look happy, but there's a tiny corner of understanding in his expression now. "The Trickster."
"He's going to be interesting," Nyarlathotep says. "That's all."
There's a beat of silence.
Long, and stretched out enough for Philemon to apparently decide that the conversation is over. There's a mug of coffee growing cold in front of him, and after a while he raises it to his mouth.
"The Trickster said I was his mother, too," Nyarlathotep says, utterly casually. "He said that to the godling."
Philemon spits his mouthful of coffee across the counter between them.
"I have absolutely no idea what was going through his head," Nyarlathotep says. "But this year isn't going to be dull."
-//-
Akira doesn't know what to expect from his year of probation in Tokyo, but things are kind of turning out okay, at least in the first few weeks. He'd been braced for an unfriendly welcome, but Leblanc is... not that. Sojiro is gruff but warming up to him, and Wakaba is weird but seems to actually like having him around. Or she likes talking to him at least, and she's fiercely interested in things that sometimes feels a little arbitrary, he can never figure out why one thing will interest her and something else won't. But it's fun, anyway. A little bit like talking to a Shadow in a Palace, more like fighting with words than having a normal conversation, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.
And the Shadows! That's a whole thing that's happening, too. Akira has never even imagined that there could be anything like Palaces in the world, but it's hard to argue with the fact that they exist now that they're becoming his favorite after school activity. The four of them, himself and Morgana and Ryuji and Ann, are doing something incredibly cool in Kamoshida's Palace, and that's the rest of the reason that Akira's first few weeks in Tokyo haven't been even close to what might be called normal.
It's been great, honestly. He never would have expected it to be fun--assuming he ever would have guessed that anything like this is possible at all--but he's having the time of his life, trying to change a heart.
Not that things are perfect, obviously. The other Shujin students point and whisper when he passes, which digs up old insecurities that he doesn't want to think about. Sometimes, in Kamoshida's Palace, they come so terrifyingly close to losing fights with Shadows that he has to go home and shake, when it's finally safe enough to do that.
(Where no one else can see)
And there's also the fact that Morgana is flat out terrified of Wakaba, which makes it awkward sometimes to bring him home. Sojiro had, after mild protest, agreed to having a cat in the cafe. Which had seemed like their biggest hurdle, right up until Morgana saw Wakaba for the first time, jumped so far out of Akira's bag he looked like a cartoon, and hissed loudly enough to draw the attention of everyone in the cafe.
(Everyone, in this case, meaning that one weird regular with the hard to remember face)
(He'd buried his head in his hands, holding back laughter but not doing it particularly well)
And things haven't gotten any better since then. Every time Akira passes through the cafe on the way in or out of his room, if Wakaba happens to be there, he can feel Morgana pressing up tight against his back inside his schoolbag, trembling. And nothing scares Morgana in Palaces, not even when they run up against Kamoshida's Shadow (who is definitely the strongest thing there, the threat that most of them had awoken Persona against). But Wakaba Isshiki scares him, and Akira doesn't understand why.
So he asks him.
The day they're supposed to leave the calling card, while they're making the short walk from Leblanc to the subway station, Akira asks, "So... you don't like Wakaba?"
Morgana pops up out of Akira's bag, and asks, "Is she here?" suspiciously. "She didn't follow us, did she?"
"No," Akira says. "I just wanted to ask you about her."
"I'm not scared of her," Morgana says, very quickly, even though Akira hadn't said anything about him being scared. Which has to mean that it had already been at the front of his mind, and that for some reason he really is afraid. "She just rubs me the wrong way."
"How come?" Akira asks.
Morgana's quiet for a very long time. So long, in fact, that Akira starts to repeat the question, thinking that Morgana must not have heard him. But Morgana shakes his head, a sound that wouldn't have been audible if he hadn't leaned out of Akira's bag, front paws on his shoulder, so that their heads are right next to each other. "I heard you," he says. "I just... don't know the answer."
"Does it have something to do with your memories?" Akira asks.
"I don't know," Morgana says. " Maybe. "It kind of feels the same, I think? But she's not a Shadow or a Palace Ruler, she's in the real world. So I shouldn't know anything about her. Unless... oh!" His paws tap a dance out on top of Akira's shoulder. "Maybe she's someone I knew when I was human? Maybe I met her?"
"I hope not," Akira says. "Because if you did, and you're having that reaction, that probably means she's someone that hurt you." Otherwise, Morgana wouldn't be cowering every time they pass Wakaba. He wouldn't be curling into a little feline ball at the bottom of Akira's bag, shaking so hard Akira can feel it through the fabric
"But it's either that," Morgana says. "Or I know her the same way I know about Shadows. And I don't know which one's worse."
Neither does Akira. "We'll keep an eye on her I guess," he says. "But she's been friendly to me."
"I know," Morgana says. "I just..." He flops back into Akira's bag. "She's bad news, Akira. She's bad."
-//-
The woman who is not Wakaba Isshiki, who is not in fact a woman at all, who is a tentacled something called Nyarlathotep, spends most of his days at Leblanc now. He keeps a smile on his face most of the time, helps out around the cafe, and argues with Philemon whenever he stops by for coffee, and to haunt the place as its most persistent regular.
"I passed the trickster on my way in today," Philemon says. "The cat doesn't trust you."
"I'm shocked," Nyarlathotep says dryly. "The dregs of your Velvet Room doesn't like me. How completely expected."
"The trickster trusts him a lot more than he trusts either of us," Philemon says. "I'm just saying that it's something to look out for."
"I'm not going to make nice with the cat," Nyarlathotep says. "What is it? Hope?" He contorts Wakaba's face into an exaggerated grimace. "Revolting."
"Right now," Philemon says. "He's just a cat, wishing he was something more."
"And a barrier in getting the trickster to listen to either of us," Nyarlathotep says. "He came from that room and falls under your domain, so I don't suppose you can just--" He waves a dismissive hand, leaving no doubt what the gesture is supposed to mean.
"I won't," Philemon says calmly. "He is serving a purpose here." He shrugs. "And he's interesting."
For several seconds, there's silence between them. Then Nyalathotep says, "I don't know what you expect me to do with your cat. We're enemies. The cat isn't going to warm up to me."
Philemon inclines his head. "You could try making friends with him."
Nyarlathotep scoffs. "Enough about the ridiculous cat," he says. "Are you just going to haunt the counter all morning, or are you going to at least pretend to drink a coffee?"
"Your coffee is terrible," Philemon says.
"Only for you," Nyarlathotep says. "I've been putting salt in it."
"Mmm," Philemon says, nodding as if this has connected all the dots. "Of course you have."
The coffee is delivered.
Philemon pulls a face when he drinks it.
-//-
The Phantom Thieves steal a Treasure, change a heart, and then--a few weeks later--recruit a new member onto their team. Akira has more and more to think about and worry over, and Morgana's anxiety over Wakaba fades slightly into the back of his mind. Morgana has been trying to put a brave face on things, and pretend that everything's fine when it's not, and Akira knows he shouldn't just let things slide, but... he doesn't exactly know what to do. Wakaba hasn't done anything threatening, so other than staying on guard, he doesn't know how to help his friend.
Things stay more or less the same, all the way through the end of Kamoshida's Palace and into the start of Madarame's. But that's when that one regular--the guy with the face that's so hard to remember that he might as well not even have one--approaches Akira in the booth where he's studying.
"I've been meaning to say this for a while," he says, politely, when Akira looks up at him. "But it seems you have a very intelligent cat."
Akira hesitates, looking past the man to where Sojiro and Wakaba are working together on something behind the counter. Technically, he knows, there aren't supposed to be any cats in the cafe. Even having this conversation could get his guardians into a lot of trouble, and he's not sure what to say.
Sojiro sighs and starts to say something, but Wakaba's eyes flick from Akira to the man, and then back to him. She nods, which Akira figures is probably approval to answer. He turns back to the regular, and says, "He's a pretty good cat."
“I am not a cat,” Morgana protests, at full volume.
“Opinionated,” the man says.
“Yeah,” Akira says, laughing a little awkwardly. He knows that only people that have been in the metaverse--meaning only the Phantom Thieves--can hear what Morgana’s actually saying. But he’s not all that used to the talking cat part of his life yet, and he keeps expecting someone to notice and comment. Something about the way this guy looks at Morgana really makes that worry jump out at him, and he can’t help but wait anxiously to hear what the man’s going to say next.
“Do you mind if I take him for a few minutes?” the man asks, and he’s so polite about it, he makes it sound so reasonable, that Akira ends up nodding agreement before he’s even had time to fully process the question. “Thank you,” the man says, and he moves quickly, scooping Morgana up and carrying him over to one of the other booths.
“I didn’t know you were a cat person,” Wakaba says.
“I think he just needs a little bit of conversation,” the man says. “He looks lonely, don’t you think?”
Morgana is probably the least lonely cat in Tokyo, Akira thinks, considering the fact that he’s the only one that can talk to the people around him. But… well, Morgana looks okay with it. He’s curled up in the man’s arms almost immediately, and Akira can swear he hears him purring. It might just be his imagination, considering the fact that he’s never heard Morgana do anything as catlike as purr before, but it really does sound like that.
Figuring that Morgana’s doing okay, Akira lets himself get back to his studying. Gets so into it actually that he starts to lose track of time, and doesn’t realize how late it’s getting until Sojiro comes over to remind him to close up after he and Wakaba go home.
“Sure,” Akira says. “Not like I have any plans for tonight, right?”
“It sounds like you’re closing up for the night,” says the man still holding Morgana. He stands, and carries the surprisingly content looking cat over to Akira. “I thank you for letting me borrow your friend for a while.”
“Yeah,” Akira says, awkwardly taking Morgana back. He still seems half asleep, shockingly content in the stranger’s arms. “Uh--thanks for holding onto him all this time. I know he can be kind of a handful.”
Morgana makes a tiny little noise of protest.
“I enjoyed the time,” the man says. “He is a very good cat.”
Akira braces for argument, but Morgana doesn’t say anything.
“I think I might have even convinced him to warm up to your mother,” the man says.
“Oh,” Akira says, flushing a little. It's not like he's never called Wakaba his mom before, but that had only been once, in a nightmare, and there's no way anyone else could know about the dumb things he says in his dreams. “Uh--no, this is just a kind of guardianship thing. She’s not--”
“We’re closing,” Wakaba says, pointedly.
“True, true,” says the man. “Well, I’ll be back tomorrow.”
The adults leave the cafe--Wakaba and the regular still snarking at each other--and Akira eyes Morgana skeptically. “You okay?” he asks.
Morgana gives a full body stretch, and blinks himself awake. “Yeah,” he says. “I don’t know. I like that guy.”
“How come?” Akira asks.
“I don’t know,” Morgana says, which of course is his usual reply to any questions about his past or his missing memories. “I just like him.” Almost grudgingly, he adds, “And he seems like he’s friends with Wakaba, so… maybe if he likes her, then she’s not actually all that bad.”
“Maybe not,” Akira agrees. He has no clue why some random guy that doesn’t seem to have anything better to do than hang out and drink coffee all day had been able to convince Morgana, but he’ll take it. He hadn’t had a problem with her to begin with, so this works out. “Anyway,” he says. “Do you want to show me more of those infiltration tools we’ve been working on?”
Morgana does, so they head upstairs to pick up where they’d left off on that.
-//-
“I fixed the cat problem,” Philemon informs Nyarlathotep, as the two of them leave the cafe. “And since I know you’re not going to say thank you, I’ll just go ahead and say you’re welcome now."
“You didn’t have to fix anything,” Nyarlathotep says. As Philemon had predicted, he does not say thank you. “I don’t care if the cat likes me.”
“You care if the trickster does, though,” Philemon says, entirely too innocently. He’s not looking at Nyarlathotep either as he continues, “I think it’s fair to say that you care if… Joker likes you.”
“There is no possible way that I could care less,” Nyarlathotep says. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed you’ve started calling him Joker to me. He’s still a human, whatever connection I may have had to the name in the past, and humans are your concern. I’m only here because the upstart in your Velvet Room personally offends me.”
“Whatever you choose to tell yourself,” Philemon says. He stops walking, and a moment later simply ceases to exist within reality. Nyarlathotep breathes a curse under his breath in some long dead language unknown to man, and goes home.
-//-
“I made a trip out to Shibuya earlier today,” Wakaba tells Akira one day in June. “And I happened to see you out there with some friends--it seemed like you were having some trouble.”
Akira, who has literally just walked into Leblanc after spending most of his afternoon being threatened by a mobster, freezes in place. The Phantom Thieves are being blackmailed, the student council president had been dragged into their newest Palace with them, and now they’re facing a Palace that covers literally all of Shibuya.
“Uh,” he says.
(He doesn’t think he has it in him right now to come up with a lie that Wakaba will believe)
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” she continues. “But are you in any kind of trouble?”
“Akira!” Morgana hisses from inside his bag. “We can’t tell her about Kaneshiro!”
Akira was not, in fact, born yesterday, and already knows that it would be incredibly bad for his probation-officer-guardian-coffee-mom to find out that a mafia leader has pictures of him standing in front of a table full of drugs.
“It’s fine,” he says instead, and pauses a second to let his brain come up with a lie. Eventually, he says, “The student council president at my school kind of got the idea that we were doing something we shouldn’t have been, and we just had an argument about it. That’s all.”
“Are you sure?” Wakaba asks. “Because I’m sure there are situations you can handle yourself in, but if this isn’t one of them…”
There’s a threat somewhere under the words, but it’s not aimed at Akira. It’s aimed at the situation she thinks he can’t handle, which is--again--the literal mafia. Akira shakes his head quickly and says, “No! There’s nothing else going on, we have it under control!”
And then he races upstairs before Wakaba can ask anything else about what she’d seen this afternoon. He doesn’t have any more answers to give her, and the last thing he wants is to somehow get her on Kaneshiro’s radar.
-//-
“This is unacceptable,” Nyarlathotep informs Philemon, a few weeks into the Phantom Thieves’ infiltration into Junya Kaneshiro’s Palace. “What are we doing here if we can’t even drive one mob boss into madness?”
“You would be making the Phantom Thieves irrelevant to this particular Palace,” Philemon says. “It’s likely that he wouldn’t even keep his Palace if you drove him mad, and then how would we explain that?”
“We wouldn’t have to,” Nyarlathotep says. “He’d never know it was us.”
“Nevertheless,” Philemon says, unperturbed. “We cannot directly interfere. That means we guide. And guiding, in this case, means that we have to let them fight their own fights, so that they can be strong enough for what lies ahead.”
“They can’t do anything if he attacks them in reality,” Nyarlathotep says. “They’re soft. They squish. They bleed, and they’ll die incredibly easily. How are they going to handle the upstart if they die here?”
“How are they going to defeat him if they aren’t allowed to grow stronger now?”
A pause.
Nyarlathotep narrows his eyes. “I hate that you have a point,” he says.
“I’m surprised how much you care.”
“I don’t… care.” He holds the words at arms length, visibly disgusted by the idea. “It’s just that it’s frustrating to be this far along and feel like we haven’t done anything to actually help.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Philemon says.
“Don’t patronize me.”
“But I really don’t,” Philemon tells him. “You put the fear of… well, you into Yaldabaoth, didn’t you?”
“I told the Trickster to drop my name the next time he had that ridiculous dream,” Nyarlathotep says. “Of course, he doesn’t know my real name, so I’m not sure how effective it was. But if the upstart is paying any attention at all, he’ll recognize the role I’m playing.” A hint of smugness, suddenly creeping in. “He hasn’t had nightmares since, though.”
“No,” Philemon muses. “It would have been impossible for us to miss that. He's been visiting the Velvet Room on his own terms, not the imposter's.”
“So at least I was able to do that much for him,” Nyarlathotep says, and for a moment he seems to be enjoying the thought of Yaldabaoth being terrified out of sending his trickster nightmares through the power of his name alone. Then the small smile fades, and he says, “But it seems like we should have done so much more by now.”
“We have been doing something very important,” Philemon says. “Or at least, you have. Humans draw strength from connections with each other. And--yes, I know that you're not human, but Joker thinks you are. He's forming a bond with you and Sakura as his guardians, and that is helping him."
"No," Nyarlathotep says. "That's absurd. You're mistaken."
"It's patently obvious to me," Philemon says. "I know you haven't bothered to learn much about how the humans you hate so much actually think, but if you had, you'd be able to see it too."
"Even if it was true," Nyarlathotep says. "That wouldn't be guidance. It wouldn't actually help him."
Philemon looks at him with pity. Their expressions, the two of them, can be difficult to read sometimes. They are inhuman, and their faces show it. Right now, however, the pity on Philemon's face is so clear that it couldn't be mistaken for anything else.
Nyarlathotep refuses to look back at him.
"This happened the last time, too," Philemon says. "You get yourself embedded with a human, you pretended you were responsible for them, and you got--"
"Don't say that," Nyarlathotep says, pointing a finger at Philemon. "If you finish that sentence, I will forget our alliance."
"You got attached," Philemon says, unperturbed.
Nyarlathotep opens Wakaba's mouth too wide, showing teeth she shouldn't have, and snarls at him.
"You're actually getting better at making coffee, too," Philemon says, raising his mug in an unbothered gesture. "You're acting like you're trying to fit into this life you've taken over. You can say you're not attached as much as you want, but actions speak louder than words." He shrugs. "It's a human expression, but it applies just as well to us."
"You are testing my patience," Nyarlathotep says.
"Then I'll change the subject," Philemon says. "What's happening with the girl?"
"With who?"
"The girl," Philemon repeats. "The daughter of the real Wakaba Isshiki. How well are you fitting in as far as she's concerned?"
This does redirect Nyarlathotep's attention, at least. His anger ebbs away, replaced by something more like irritation. Less explosive, maybe. Or less teeth, certainly. "She's proven difficult," he admits, "No one else has questioned Wakaba Isshikis reappearance, but the daughter can't accept it."
"She has a Palace," Philemon says.
"I'm aware," Nyarlathotep says. "And I can change the reality around her death, I can make everyone else believe she's alive, but I think the daughter's Palace must be actually centered around her mother’s demise. It's too deeply rooted to change."
"That must make home life difficult," Philemon observes dryly. “With the two of you both there.”
"She refuses to leave her room or interact with me," Nyarlathotep says, "I believe she was struggling and having hallucinations even before this year, and her mind hasn't quite decided how to handle me." Brightening slightly, he adds, "So at least I’ve been able to drive someone to madness with all this."
"I'm not sure that's a good thing," Philemon says.
"Well of course you don't," Nyarlathotep says. "You like humans. you're biased."
"I won't deny that I have my opinions," Philemon says, "But in this case, specifically, I think it's better to avoid driving the daughter into insanity. Have you observed her potential?"
"For a Persona, I assume?" Nyarlathotep says, "Not particularly. I know she has the potential, but considering the depth of her distortion, we aren't actually going to see her using that Persona."
“We might," Philemon says, "If the distortion was removed through a change of heart."
"Point the Phantom Thieves at her, you mean?" Nyarlathotep asks. "Let them take care of her Palace so she can awaken?”
“She has the potential for a navigation Persona,” Philemon says. “Which Joker and his friends are sorely in need of.”
Nyralathotep shrugs. “She might get the Persona if we aimed the Thieves at her, but she'd also realize that her memories of her mother dying are true. It would raise questions about my presence, at the very least. And if she awakens a Persona, and starts asking questions about me, how long will it be before the Trickster is asking those same questions?"
"Sounds a bit chaotic," Philemon says, "I thought it would be right up your alley."
Nyarlathotep glares at him. But then he admits, “…it might be.”
"And I thought," Philemon says, more quietly. "That you might appreciate the chance to be able to be more open with this new Joker you're bonding with."
Instantly, Nyarlathotep is enraged. "This isn't about him!" he says. "I don't care."
"Yes you do," Philemon says. "The difference between the way you talk about Wakaba's child and yours is--"
"He is not my--that's why you asked about the girl?"
"One of the reasons," Philemon says. "I really do think that it will help to have her awaken her Persona." He leans back in his chair, his gaze thoughtful and distant. "But I also think that if you're worried about being able to guide the Trickster, then letting them see the distortions in her heart is the best way forward."